Routine
by skyspireskit3
Summary: -Sequel to "Limits"- Alfred's thoughts. One-shot, BrucexJoker


Disclaimer: Not mine

This takes place after my fic "Limits."

* * *

Alfred walks.

One foot in front of the other, blind  
through the dark  
reopening his footprints in the dust.

He knows everything, and he knows nothing.

Over the mangled tightropes of this new life  
he's stretched out his hands  
for some semblance of routine.  
How strange  
to have found it here  
wading through the cataract-pale  
moonlight of a world  
he no longer pretends he understands.

It started long ago  
an empty-eyed vigil for an orphan's nightly screams  
to the present of an absence that echoes louder  
while the clocks guillotine the lightless hours to infinity.  
Amazing, he thinks, how even  
the greatest horrors  
can fade into normalcy.

Alfred walks.

This new house is  
cold, uninviting, sleek and hard as a unused tomb.  
None of the comfortable wear  
of generations past, no friendly ghosts to dog his heels  
none of the histories of kind and great people  
to sort through for slivers of hope.  
Only the dark, parasitic, slavering for insanity  
and the only ghost haunting these halls  
is he.

Some days, he feels  
even he too  
is fading.

He and Bruce talk at, rather than to  
each other now.  
Silence prowls in the spaces between them.  
Sometimes they try, but they can't pretend that nothing has changed.  
The Joker is a florescent nightmare  
forever shackled over them.

Three months since his discovery, Alfred still sees little  
of the Joker himself.  
A sputter of green hair caught out the corner of an eye. Stains of makeup on the sheets.  
But his presence festers in every shadow.  
And then there was that day when Alfred went to the living room  
to find the Joker, undeniable in violent purple and coarse paint  
slowly, almost methodically,  
tossing things from the mantel into the fireplace.  
"Those," Alfred deadpanned, "were probably priceless."  
The Joker didn't give him a glance. "And yet they still _break_."  
Alfred stayed where he was. After a while the Joker said, "Going to keep an eye on me? Make sure I don't chew the rug?"  
"You'll understand," Alfred had said, civility sticking in his throat, "if I don't entirely trust you."  
The Joker threw him a grimy leer. "Trust me, I'm fucking your boy."  
When Bruce came in and wordlessly (protectively?) led the Joker away,  
Alfred watched them go, and a memory struck  
of Bruce, eleven years old and morose, in that same spot before the hearth  
disposing of a handful of heirlooms in the exact same way.  
(Alfred hadn't needed to check a calendar  
for the time of year, but he'd done so anyway later and grimaced.)  
When asked, Bruce had said only, "It's not like they're real."

For one, just one terrible  
lunatic moment  
that stops him in his tracks,  
the two faces in Alfred's mind, the painted madman and the boy with raveside eyes  
overlay, indistinguishable.  
Good God, had Fate's fickle axis tilted  
just slightly another way…  
Could it have been? Would it have been?

No.  
No. He can't believe that.

Alfred walks.

There's a gun, in the house. Tucked away from Bruce's knowledge.  
Sometimes Alfred thinks of it, envisions  
its lethal sureness in his palm, trigger easy to his touch  
and the vulnerable back of the Joker's twisted skull.  
The lifeblood of this madness burst and spilled, its hold on Bruce finally gone  
but two things slash that fantasy's throat.  
First and foremost, someone has to stay human for Bruce. To keep whatever hasn't been swallowed  
by the chasm of the mask and that madman  
still alive.  
And the other is, should he pull that trigger  
Bruce just  
might kill him.

It's not the thought itself so much, but that  
he would ever think it at all  
that turns Alfred's insides to snowmelt.  
When did he come  
to see Bruce in that way?  
Does he really think that's what Bruce has become?  
No.  
He still has faith. He still believes in Batman.  
He sees this city, the people Batman rescues  
from its insatiable jaws  
and that must continue, no matter what the cost.

And, God help him, but he's been mourning Bruce  
since That Day long ago.

For the first time, Alfred considers  
it wasn't the Joker who lured Bruce  
over that edge. He'd been there all along,  
and it's the only place he's thrived.  
Braving the thorns, Alfred lets his mind return  
to the sight nothing could have prepared him for:  
his master and the Joker, entwined on the bed like mating sharks  
Bruce ensnared in the Joker's hungry limbs.  
Now, he wonders if the Joker wasn't  
isn't  
just as trapped.  
Alfred knows that this might be  
love  
in the only way Bruce  
will have it again.  
Yes, love  
that thing which no man can escape.  
Perhaps, like him, it only looks  
as if they have a choice.

Bruce. This house. The War.  
There is nothing else.

Alfred walks

and stops.

Bruce's door.

All this time he's been retracing  
that familiar path from the past.  
His hand on the wood and it could be  
all those years ago, checking in on a wounded child.  
Now, what will he find? Nothing, or the bloody scraps of his master  
weeping from the ceiling, from a monster's knife?

Alfred gently turns the knob.  
Peers in.

On the bed, two shapes.  
One dark and battle-hardened, the other lean and ash-white  
curled seamlessly together.  
Breathing calm.

Through the dark,  
a single, green eye stares  
balefully back.

Alfred quickly shuts the door again.


End file.
